Everyone knows what this is. The Answer to the Great Question. The Life, the Universe and Everything. The one found out by Deep Thought, the second largest computer of the universe of space and time in seven and half millions of years.

There was a moment’s expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel.
“Good morning,” said Deep Thought at last.
“Er… Good morning, O Deep Thought,” said Loonquawl nervously, “do you have… er, that is…”
“An answer for you?” interrupted Deep Thought majestically. “Yes. I have.”
The two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain.
“There really is one?” breathed Phouchg.
“There really is one,” confirmed Deep Thought.
“To Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?”
“Yes.”
Both of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming like excited children.
“And you’re ready to give it to us?” urged Loonquawl.
“I am.”
“Now?”
“Now,” said Deep Thought.
They both licked their dry lips.
“Though I don’t think,” added Deep Thought, “that you’re going to like it.”
“Doesn’t matter!” said Phouchg. “We must know it! Now!”
“Now?” inquired Deep Thought.
“Yes. Now…”
“Alright,” said the computer, and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
“You’re really not going to like it,” observed Deep Thought.
“Tell us!”
“Alright,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question…”
“Yes…!”
“Of Life, the Universe and Everything…” said Deep Thought.
“Yes…!”
“Is…” said Deep Thought, and paused.
“Yes…!”
“Is…”
“Yes…!!!…?”
“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
It was a long time before anyone spoke.
Out of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces down in the square outside.
“We’re going to get lynched aren’t we?” he whispered.
“It was a tough assignment,” said Deep Thought mildly.
“Forty-two!” yelled Loonquawl. “Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?”
“I checked it very thoroughly,” said the computer, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.”

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

However, the recently published Goose Game seems to finally give us the correct interpretation of forty-two, and thus the key to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

I have recently edited for the Europe Publisher the Hungarian version of Il libro dei labirinti by Paolo Santarcangeli, published for the first time in the 1970s, but now published again with the author’s additions, new illustrations and a foreword by Umberto Eco.

This book looks back at the history of the labyrinth topos together with all its relations and dead ends. And when reaching the Renaissance, and discussing the relationship between the popular games of the period, including the turf maze and the “noble goose game”, number 42 suddenly flashes up just as the giant neon letters emerging from the dark space at the beginning of Hollywood movies:

“Due to its concentric circles, the goose game in itself has a labyrinth-like path; and if there exists any intentional and conscious representation of the “obstacle-ridden pilgrimage”, so that’s it. Besides its inherently labyrinthine nature, this game also has another surprising feature which is important for our topic. Square 42, which is considered a “dangerous” place in almost all versions of the game, is nothing else but “the house of the labyrinth”; what is more, the labyrinth is but the “trademark” of square 42."

But why exactly square number 42?

The goose game, the first European table game appeared in late 15th-century Florence, in the court of Lorenzo il Magnifico. This was also the laboratory of the first card game, which had a huge impact on the iconography of Renaissance art, quoted by me several times in the first critical edition of Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593), the earliest encyclopedia of the symbol language of the Renaissance. Santarcangeli thus assumes that the number symbolism of the two games can be explained from each other.

The deck of Lorenzo il Magnifico consists of 42 numbered cards, each representing an allegory. Card number 21, ending the first half of the deck is a usual depiction of the world, the cosmos or Mother Nature in the form of a naked woman, with the globe under her foot, which also refers to her unstable and unpredictable nature. However, the image of the last card number 42 is not clear at first glance, so we have to turn to the interpretation of Santarcangeli:

“Card 42 represents a pilgrim on the brink of an abyss. He looks back in horror. Before him, but on the other side of the abyss, there is a castle. This symbolizes the man who encounters difficulties during his trip. This card also warns us not to let hesitation and obstruction stop us.”

Representation of both symbols in one emblem: “The Christian soul in the labyrinth of the world”.
Engraving by Boethius von Bolswart (1580-1634) in Hermann Hugo’s Pia desideria
(1624), one of the most popular and most often published emblem books

The meaning of square 42 is thus the dangerous labyrinth of the world. That of card 42, its equivalent, is persistence on a given place, efforts for the really important things. And its value is exactly twice that of the unstable world. This is, then, the Life, the Universe and Everything, and the Answer matching it.

A more suitable one we cannot advise to our Readers for the new year, rich in struggles.

I have just noticed, as I went on my usual evening walk on the Russian net, that I have forgotten about a birthday again. On 30 December 1922 the Soviet Union was born. But I already have some experience in the matter, and I always have a reserve gift for such unexpected occasions, so I do not stand empty-handed in the middle of the general celebration.

On the Russian net they recall nostalgic memories with the coat of arms, flag and photos of the Soviet Union, which I do understand. I, however, reach back straight to the Soviet Union’s founding fathers. This little book was published in 1926, and it presents each member of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) with an icon-like portrait and a short poem to the Soviet children. Although each image is the portrait of a specific individual, his name is not disclosed to the child. It is me who add it to the prosaic translation of each poem, complemented with the duration of his office, as well as with the date and cause of his death. This latter makes the document much less nostalgic than the bulk of the festive posts, but in turn this makes it a faithful birth certificate of the fêted one, which also includes its hereditary and childhood diseases, thus suggesting why it deceased so young, albeit still much beyond the country’s male life expectancy which by then fell under 50 years of age.

Your people’s commissars are at home with you

Moscow: Oktyabrenok, 1926 (it had two editions, in 1925 and 1926; this is the latter, as the narkomtorg is Kamenev instead of Krasin, since November 1925)
Poems: N. Y. Agnivtsev. Illustrations: K. Yeliseev and K. Rotov

The book was banned from the 1930s until 1987.

Narkompros (нарком просвещения, people’s commissar for enlightenment)

He makes efforts so you do not stay stupid.

Anatoly Vasilevich Lunacharsky (1917-1929; after Stalin comes to power, he loses all his government positions, and dies in 1933 in France)

Hundred and three years ago, on 28 December 1908 the most powerful ever recorded earthquake in Europe shook the city of Messina in Sicily, and within minutes a twelve-meter tsunami swept across the coast. Almost every building of the city collapsed, burying seventy thousand people under themselves.

Messina is located on the shore of the strait separating Sicily from the Italian peninsula, opposite the city of Reggio Calabria. The two cities of Greek foundation were the ancient Scylla and Charybdis known from the Odyssey, between which either the vortex of the latter sucked in the boats, or the former decimated the sailors. Messina once before had played a tragic role in European history: from its port spread in 1348 to all Europe the Black Death which in two years killed half the population of the continent. A century before the 1908 disaster, in 1783 already a major earthquake shook the city, but this warning was not successful: Messina was rebuilt with elegant, but not earthquake-resistent buildings, with weak foundations and heavy roofs.

On vintage photos we often see the members of the Italian, British, and even American navy who arrived to Messina in the week after the disaster to help the survivors. It is not widely known, however, that in the ruined city for several days it was only the Russian navy who rescued the survivors from under the ruins, provided for the wounded, extinguished the fire following the earthquake, and transported to safer regions those who lost all their property. In fact, four cruisers of the Imperial fleet – the Tsesarevich, Slava, Admiral Makarov and Bogatyr – during their Mediterranean voyage, with the cadets of the St. Petersburg naval academy on board, anchored just a day earlier to the south of the city, in the harbor of Augusta. Their commander, Admiral V. Litvinov on hearing the news asked in telegram the Russian Maritime Ministry for permission to participate in the rescue. In the course of this even an armed struggle took place. The nearly eight hundred criminals who escaped from the collapsed prisons began to plunder the city, but the Russian cadets successfully applied their newly acquired military training against the forces outnumbering them.

Italian king Victor Emmanuel arriving soon to the city personally thanked for the help of the Russian navy, and then in telegram to Tsar Nicholas II. In the following year Messina became the twin city of St. Petersburg, and this relationship has survived all the vicissitudes of the century. The anniversary is regularly remembered on the Italian and Russian net as well, where I collected the archive photos. And the documentary below was broadcasted some months ago on the Petersburg television channel of the Orthodox Solunsky Foundation.

A postcard with the photo of the surviving postmen of Messina, issued to support the rebuilding;
international aid stamps with Russian, German and Hungarian denominations;
and the royal award bestowed on the Russian, British and
American navy participating in the rescue

I got this simple little book printed on foldout cardboard from my mother at the age of three, and I was very impressed. The deep colors reaching into each other led towards deep secrets, and the mixture of unknown and quite familiar elements rendered natural the passage between the world of home and that of books. Of course I have been able to formulate this only decades later; at that time I just gratefully absorbed text and image alike. One becomes a reader well before the knowledge of letters.

I have no copy of the first edition, but the number of copies of the second and third edition of 1974 and 1980 – 57 800 and 70 000, respectively – suggest that many other children may have read it. It is strange how many ugly editions of this same Lullaby were published after this really well-shaped one.

Nowadays, when I sometimes see it in a second-hand bookshop, I buy it for a gift.

The Lullaby is known by most kindergarten-age children, as the author of the little poem was Attila József, one of the most important Hungarian poets. (The twentieth century otherwise abounds in most important Hungarian poets.) The drawings are by Ádám Würtz. It has a number of English translations (1, 2, with a glossary); the one you can read when moving the mouse over the Hungarian verses is by Edwin Morgan. Here you can also listen to a famous sung version of it by Zsuzsa Koncz, one of the most popular singers of the same period, the 70s and 80s.